When the false start is true - Ministry's "Work for Love"

There are a number of stories about people or groups of people that do one thing and get huge success...and then do something completely different and have even huger success.

But there are still the people that think that things were great at the beginning, and went downhill from there.

I bet there are people who wish that the Fresh Prince had remained a rapper and never gotten involved in that television or movie junk.

Or who wish that Depeche Mode had just disbanded after Vince Clarke left the band.

With that preface, let me introduce my favorite Ministry song.



The person who posted this video of "Work for Love" on YouTube made the following comment:

This is for all those who continue to believe Al's story that With Sympathy was the result of an over zealous production team at Arista. And for those, like myself, who are fond of the early Ministry sound. This and all the other material from that album(written by Mr. Al J.) was performed regularly throughout 82-84 before and after the studio recording. This is the opening song from the 7/20/83 show at First Avenue in Minneapolis, MN.

While I love "Work for Love," and the YouTube poster loves "Work for Love," not everyone agrees:

There are those artists who get a couple releases into their career before they feel the pressure from the suits at the label to “have a hit,” and then there are those artists who sell out right from the get-go.

Ministry certainly falls into the latter category and their debut longplayer smacks of blatant commerciality…blatant, misguided, and downright silly commerciality....

How else does one explain such tracks as “Work For Love” and “What He Say?” — the latter a laughably kitschy blend of synth-pop and, uh, world music…I think....

No wonder Jourgenson has spent the better part of three decades trying to live this one down, putting on one helluva “tough-guy” act in the process.

But as for me, I just can't get enough (geddit?) of that old song.

P.S. And yes, I inspired myself to look up this old tune.

(empo-tuulwey) When music-making technology and gaming results in philosophical questions

Hundreds of years ago, the only way to make music was to learn how to play a musical instrument, or to sing passably well. As time marched forward, various technological advances, ranging from programmable synthesizers to auto-tune (see previous post), have allowed people to create music without years upon years of study.

At the same time, there has been a movement in the software world toward more engaging interfaces, to the point where some people are actively using gaming principles in their software design. (See all of my posts in my Empoprise-BI business blog that mention FourSquare.)

Put these together, and your head will spin around.

Jon Healey:

CES isn't usually a place for mulling existential questions, but here's a couple for you: What constitutes a musical instrument, and what does it mean to be a musician? I couldn't help wondering about that after seeing a demo of a prototype from Music Mastermind, a two-year-old Calabasas-based start-up founded by a former major-label executive and a Wall Street trader. MMM is developing a music-creation tool that erases the line between video games and composition. It enables people to create full-blown, professional-sounding songs by singing into a computer or specialized portable device, then using a software band to provide the backing track. And it does so with the look and feel of a video game.

After Healey attended a demo at CES, he reported:

It's obviously not the same as playing the notes yourself on real instruments with honest-to-goodness recording equipment, but it's close enough to be startling. That's why MMM's chief technical officer, Reza Rassool, calls the software "the first 21st century musical instrument."

MMM noted that this was not the first move to expand music-making. They cited karaoke as another example of the extension of music-making to the people.

Now whether you consider MMM's opponents as backwards-thinking Luddites or true musicians probably depends, at least in part, upon your personal music-making capabilities. Yet at the same time, I personally don't feel that MMM has really lowered the bar much more than auto-tune, karaoke, programmable synthesizers, and the like have already done. There's a wide spectrum of opinions on what is true music vs. what is fake - for example, I'm sure there's a very vocal minority of people who believe that music went to hell when Les Paul started electrifying guitars. And on the other hand, there are probably people who believe that no performance should ever be live, because of the possible errors that can occur during a live performance.

So, how do you feel about technology and music?

You Do Not Want This Product, Part One

Christmas and my birthday occur at about the same time, so I need to come up with a bunch of gift ideas for family members. However, my gift ideas are often either boring (socks) or prohibitively expensive (a netbook). This year - whoops, I mean last year, since I'm talking about 2009 - I solved the problem by putting a lot of CDs on my wish list.

As a result, I ended up receiving five CDs over the holiday season. I just opened up the third CD (Air's Moon Safari, if you're curious) a few minutes ago, and I'm sick of the CD opening process.

By the time you get a CD opened, you're half convinced that the record companies would prefer that you not listen to the music. First you have to take off the wrapper, and then you have to peel off the really sticky wrapper that's on the top of the CD. Basically, it's a huge hassle.

But it isn't only the evil record industry that packages its products in an unusable manner. I'll continue this thought in a post on my business blog.

Billy Hill & the Hillbillies, Disneyland

A Christmas show. Billy is giving Charlie Daniels...and Jimmy Page...a run for their money.

A lost opportunity?

OK, let's talk about a music manager. Actually, a fake music manager. You see, Dave Madden played the manager on The Partridge Family. I was surfing one night and ended up at a Partridge Family website, which included a recent interview with Madden. He's had a varied career, and he told a story that was heartbreaking.

My manager had a little club in Beverly Hills called The Ye Little Club and he called me in one night. I had gone out and worked some Playboy Clubs and I was in town and he called me because the singer was sick and he wanted me to come and perform on a Saturday night. In the audience was a writer for Screen Gems named Jerry Davis and his wife, and Nat King Cole's manager and his wife. After the show, they called me over to their table and Nat Cole's manager asked if I would like to do an eight-week tour with Nat King Cole. And Nat was my favorite singer, so there was no problem there!

At this point, the interviewer said, "That must have been a treat!" But Madden replied:

Well, it would have been. What happened there was the date we were supposed to open the tour at the Steel Pier in Atlantic City was the day they buried him. I never even got to meet him. So that was that.

A business-government partnership gone awry - buskers don't want to sing Coke jingles in the London Underground

I live in Ontario, California, which doesn't exactly have the outdoor cafe and entertainment climate that you can find in other cities, such as San Francisco. In other places, you have singers and entertainers on the streets, and the government encourages it.

Some cities have even changed their regulations to encourage such activity. Take London, for example:

The licensed Underground busking scheme was launched in 2003 by London Underground. Before this busking was illegal and completely unregulated. Thanks to London Underground the scheme is now a licensed scheme and is popular with passengers

The quote about the 2003 legalization (whoops, legalisation) of busking was taken from the end of a London Underground Press Release, which also included the following:

From Monday 30 November buskers will be entertaining passengers on new Coca-Cola branded busking pitches across the Tube network.

Around 240 active buskers help brighten passengers' journeys by performing at 21 central Tube stations.

The licensed busking scheme currently includes 33 busking pitches, which are like mini-stages for musicians, however no busker will be required to sing or play on the Tube.

But BusinessWeek noted that the buskers do have one little teeny-tiny requirement to fulfill:

Coke also wants singers to perform its theme tune ‘Holidays Are Coming’ and other Christmas carols as part of the viral ad campaign.

As you can imagine, the buskers embraced this opportunity to sing a Coke jingle with wide open arms...oh, wait, they didn't.

Michael Ball, a 47-year-old jazz guitarist from Tulse Hill who has been busking for 25 years in Tube stations, said: "Not in a million years will I play some Coke jingle. Most buskers make half their annual income in December. Londoners are really up for it and generous at this time and we know what songs and music work. Do commuters really want to hear a corporate jingle from every busker? What a daft idea."

Coca-Cola's response?

"Coca-Cola is sponsoring busking on London Underground this Christmas but we are in too early a stage to confirm the details of the arrangement."

As Bill Cosby would say, "RIIIIIGHT." It's too early to confirm details of the arrangement of something that will happen less than 20 days from now, and for which Coca-Cola has already issued its own press release?

Superb juxtaposition - was ist das Wort für Ringo im Deutsch?

The writer of this November 10 Guardian blog post chose to look at ultra-influential German electronic band Kraftwerk from the lens of another band. You see, the writer referred to Kraftwerk as "the Fab Four." There are several striking similarities between the two bands.

First, at the height of their respective fames, each band had exactly four members.

Second, Kraftwerk had a secretary named Beatle, and the Beatles had a secretary named Kraftwerk. No they didn't - I made that up.

OK, the REAL second similarity is that both bands were EXTREMELY influential, both within their genres and well beyond. Can you say "Joe Cocker"? Can you say "Coldplay"? And there's also the legions of fans who picked up guitars or synths in emulation of their heroes.

One big difference between the two - the Beatles had a ton of hits in my home country of the United States, but Kraftwerk only had one hit here. But that hit certainly affected the band:

The money from the Autobahn hit single – which made the US top 40 after being edited down from 22 minutes to just four – afforded Kraftwerk the luxury of studio experimentation without any outside interference. It also allowed the group to close ranks and jettison all outside ties, a tradition that continues to this day – they have a legendary fear of press commitments and there is no way to communicate with their Kling Klang studios. No telephone, no fax, no reception. And as for letters? They're returned unopened. Kraftwerk evoke the isolation, boredom and monotony of existence by favouring an aesthetic detachment and a reliance on machines.

I would like to interject one thought here - there are situations in which Kraftwerk was influential musically, but not as influential lyrically. Certainly there are many Kraftwerk-influenced artists and bands who have bought into their machine-like isolation - Gary Numan being the prime example. But at the same time, there are other bands who, while incorporating Kraftwerk's musical styles, have chosen to provide a more human lyrical outlook - and right now I'm trying to figure out a way to complete this sentence without having to spell out the full name of OMD. In particular, I'm thinking of OMD's early song "Almost," and their two songs about Joan of Arc. "Almost" in particular sounds like it could have been recorded in Düsseldorf, but the lyrics are light years away from anything that Kraftwerk, or Gary Numan, were doing at that time.

Off-topic postscript - for those who remember old blogs, it appears that the Superfluous Juxtaposition blog is no more. I mourn its passing.

Navigating the new rules and non-rules of online music use

I am featured in a video that is available on YouTube. However, I am not posting the video in this blog post, for two reasons.

First, my link to the video would violate the privacy of the person who uploaded the video.

Second, if you were to view the video, your visions of me as an extremely dignified person would be shattered. You see, the video was filmed this summer at the apartment complex where I grew up. The film shows me walking away from the apartment, crossing the street, and walking to the playground - but when I get to the playground, I jump up and down like a loonybird and run to the playground equipment. (The video closes with a sign noting that the playground is only intended for children age 10 and under.)

The interesting part is that the videographer chose to use Louis Armstrong's "What a Wonderful World" as background music. (Personally, I would have chosen Madonna's "This Used to Be My Playground," but this is the videographer's prerogative.) Within a day of the video being uploaded, YouTube had inserted an Amazon/iTunes advertisement for the song below the video.

This suggests some interesting things that could be done. Should my YouTube rights ever be reinstated, perhaps I should make my own video, but choose the worst possible background music for the video, just so YouTube will advertise the ability to purchase it.

Feelings. Woah woah woah.

Proving someone's point, I guess - "Won't Get Fooled Again" unavailable on MTV website

I just wrote a post in my Empoprise-BI business blog entitled Meet the new boss, same as the old boss - Tara and Steven, the new middlemen may be worse than the old. Most of you will probably recognize the beginning of the post title; it's a quote from the Who song "Won't Get Fooled Again."

In an effort to spice up things, I figured I'd find a video of the song. Because of my troubles with YouTube, I figured I'd check out what MTV had to offer. So I searched and I found a live performance of the song.

Only one problem - when I tried to play the video, I instead got the message

We're sorry, this video isn't available now. We're doing our best to bring it back.

I don't know if the old boss or the new boss is to blame, but it figures that this song would be blocked by somebody.

So, until gawlerpete's account is permanently disabled, let's go to YouTube.

WWBD?

This wasn't supposed to happen.

The McDonald's brand is one of the most universal brands, and one would think that the brand would march inexorably to conquer the entire world and good portions of the solar system. But this expansion has been stopped in its tracks in Iceland, due to the depreciated exchange rate for the Icelandic currency, the krona. You see, McDonalds in Iceland was importing all of its food from Germany, and apparently there are high taxes also. McDonald's franchisee in Iceland, Jon Ogmundsson, noted:

For a kilo of onion, imported from Germany, I’m paying the equivalent of a bottle of good whiskey.

As I tried to ascertain the impact of this closure on our lives, I realized that I only know of two people from Iceland:

• Bjork.


• The other one (the guy) who was in the Sugarcubes.

Now I don't even know if Bjork lives in Iceland any more, or if she even eats meat, but certainly the closure of McDonald's in Iceland would serve her as material for a song. Something with screaming and the wail of the cow, I would think.

But there is an association between Bjork and McDonald's - just the wrong Bjork. I found a reference to a McDonald's employee named Lotta Bjork.

But I did find one Twitter user who lamented Pobre Bjork upon hearing of the McDonald's closure.

And then she did this thing with her hands...

I was attending a presentation this morning, and one of the presenters departed slightly from her PowerPoint slide.

The presenter's slide stated that a particular system was "Bigger, Better, Faster."

However, as she was talking, she said that the system was "Bigger, Better, Faster, Stronger."

I don't know if it was intentional, but I - hey! Kanye?

OK, JOHN, IMMA GONNA LET YOU FINISH, AND THAT HANDS VIDEO WAS COOL, BUT MY VIDEO FOR "STRONGER" WAS THE GREATEST VIDEO OF ALL TIME!

(Sorry, couldn't resist.)

If you're not certain what I'm talking about, be sure to view this video and this video.

Garth Brooks shows why you need more than marketing

Garth Brooks has re-emerged in the news over the last few days. The first word (at least that I saw) came on Thursday:

Garth Brooks has an interesting take on retirement. The country superstar, who hung up his ten-gallon in 2000, says he's back in the game ... but with no immediate plans. Brooks, 47, made his announcement Thursday during a press conference in Nashville. "We're going to take the retirement roof off over our head, and I already feel taller," he said.

PopEater, source of the above, also printed a rumor:

It has been rumored that he is preparing a sixteen-week run in Las Vegas.

So at that point, we knew that Brooks had called a press conference to announce that he had no immediate plans. Kinda reminds me about the time that our local news station had a reporter, live on the scene in Santa Barbara, to report - LIVE - that Linda McCartney did NOT die in Santa Barbara as was initially reported.

As far as I know, Garth isn't a vegetarian, but the idea of calling a press conference to announce that you have no plans seems a little odd.

The next bit of news came from the Inquisitr, which pretty much reported the same press conference, but with a little bit of editorial comment:

I for one welcome Mr. Brooks back into the fold, his hit song writing has been missed.

Thankfully Brooks didn’t announce any plans to un-retire his alter ego “rocker” Chris Gaines.

And remember that rumor that PopEater posted? Well, it seems that Brooks DID have some plans after all. From a later Inquisitr post:

After announcing that he would be coming out of retirement after a 9 year hiatus, Garth announced special shows starting on December 11th 2009.

Oh, and...

Tickets for the shows will be announced in quarterly lots, with performance times possibly changing over the 5 year period of the singers contract.

So Brooks went from having no immediate plans, to having a five-year commitment. Five years - kinda like if Kirk and Spock and McCoy were hanging out on the beach, and then decided a day later to explore the universe for a while. My brain hurts a lot.

One could condemn this as the manipulative marketing that has been associated with Garth Brooks in the past.

Only one thing, though - Brooks is good.

The Inquisitr's James Allen Johnson pegged it right. AllMusicGuide (via CMT) pegged Brooks' influence as follows:

Garth Brooks is a pivotal figure in the history of country music, no matter how much some country purists would like to deny it. With his commercially savvy fusion of post-Merle Haggard country, honky tonk, post-folk-rock sensitive singer/songwriter sensibilities, and '70s arena rock dramatics, Brooks brought country music to a new audience in the '90s -- namely, a mass audience. Before Brooks, it was inconceivable for a country artist to go multi-platinum. He shattered that barrier in 1991....

Now of course there is a school of thought that believes that if anything is that popular, it has to be bad. But Brooks is also known for pushing boundaries, both lyrically and musically. From AMG:

[A] backlash began to develop in the fall of 1992, beginning with the release of "We Shall Be Free," the first single from his fourth album. Featuring a strong gospel underpinning, the single stalled at number 12 and many radio stations refused to play it. It was indicative of the eclectic nature of his forthcoming album, The Chase, which pushed the boundaries of contemporary country. The Chase debuted at number one upon its October 1992 release and by the end of the year, it sold over five million copies. Nevertheless, that number was half the size of the figures for his two previous albums and there was speculation in the media that Brooks' career had already peaked.

But the real experimentation occurred a few years later, when Brooks recorded as the aforementioned Chris Gaines.

As the Chris Gaines album was about to hit stores, Brooks' new persona was revealed to the public. Since the machinations of [the movie] The Lamb were only known to music insiders and fans who religiously followed the trades, Brooks' sudden re-emergence as a slimmed-down, soul-patched, shaggy-haired soulful pop crooner was utterly bizarre to almost every observer. There was a massive PR campaign to shed light on Chris Gaines, complete with a TV special, but the details were so convoluted that it couldn't be explained easily. In the Life of Chris Gaines was released at the end of September 1999, and although it entered the charts at number two, it was a major commercial disappointment; by the time Christmas rolled around, some major stores were offering heavy discounts on the record in hopes of clearing out unsold stock.

But regarding the road that Brooks' career has taken - through Chris Gaines, through "We Shall Be Free," through record unavailability and re-releases that would make Disney proud - Brooks simply says that he's being honest. Here's what he said in 1994:

I get a lot of messages from people who think I do certain things for the shocks and as a marketing ploy. That's not the truth. Not at all. it's like when that line "When we're free to love anyone we choose" caused so much trouble, I looked at myself in the mirror and said: "Man, you are one controversial person. But you're a very plain guy, a meat-and-potatoes guy. How come everything that you do is so controversial?" It's funny how sometimes real life is the odd way to look at things.

But he'll presumably play this song in Vegas.

Everybody need reverse polarity - Rush's "Vital Signs"

In a FriendFeed conversation about Jefferson Starship that continued this evening, Alex Scoble mentioned Rush. And he wasn't talking about the non-owner of an NFL team, but the band.

The mention triggered a memory of my favorite Rush song, a song that closed out the album "Moving Pictures." (Great album cover, by the way.)

Peter H. Donnelly took the time to record the lyrics to this song. Here is the chorus:

A tired mind become a shape-shifter
Everybody need a mood lifter
Everybody need reverse polarity
Everybody got mixed feelings
About the function and the form
Everybody got to deviate from the norm

When I first heard this in college, I assumed that Rush were parodying themselves. But that song has certainly engendered its share of discussion. Take this tweet:

'Everybody needs reverse polarity', sang Geddy Lee of Rush on Vital Signs. Sorry, not me.

But perhaps it's best to hear what Neil Peart said:

We had purposefully left one song still unwritten, with a view to writing it directly in the studio, as we have had such good results from this previously. Songs such as "Natural Science," and "The Twilight Zone" have benefitted from the pressure and spontaneity of this situation, although then it happened by force of circumstances, where now our planning includes a space for 'no-plan.'

"Vital Signs" was the ultimate result, eclectic in the extreme, it embraces a wide variety of stylistic influences, ranging from the sixties to the present. Lyrically, it derives from my response to the terminology of 'Technospeak,' the language of electronics and computers, which often seems to parallel the human machine, in the functions and interrelationships they employ. It is interesting, if irrelevant, to speculate as to whether we impose our nature on the machines that we build, or whether they are merely governed by the inscrutable laws of Nature as we. (Perhaps Murphy's Laws?) Never mind!

Oh dear...maybe they were serious. Or maybe Peart's just pulling our collective legs.

Remember Peter Donnelly? The reason that he posted the lyrics to the song was because he then proceeded to analyze said lyrics. Here's what he said about reverse polarity:

I agree with the next paragraph that everyone needs reverse polarity. Simple reverse polarity is sleep, entertainment, or relaxation for most people, but for very creative people it can mean connecting to the unconsciousness or the imagination, but which, like meditation, is still a knowable, explainable, and conscious method and process.

So...what do you think?

Or should I just go back to listening to Jefferson Starship?

(Picture source, license)

Could Gladinet potentially incur the wrath of the RIAA?

Some time ago, I heard about SkyDrive (from Sarah Perez) and started using it via my personal MSN account. However, despite some isolated use (and attempts at use), I never really adopted it to any great length because (at least in my experience) the upload and download times were too slow for my taste. But should general upload/download speeds improve, the idea of moving my files to the cloud - from which I could access them from anywhere - sounds very attractive.

Steven Hodson recently wrote about something that would make cloud storage even more attractive - a service called Gladinet that allows you to mount cloud storage as a Windows drive.

And Hodson notes that Gladinet supports more than SkyDrive:

As you can see from the drop down list Gladinet supports the following cloud file storage services:

* EMC Atmos
* Box.net
* Google Picasa
* Google Docs
* Google Docs for Google Apps (Pro)
* Amazon S3
* WebDav
* FTP Server

Note that Google Docs is one of the items above. We'll return to that in a moment.

Now that is really powerful, and really easy to use. One example that immediately came to mind (assuming viable network speeds) was putting my music files on the cloud, connecting to them via a Z: drive, and then being able to access them from any of my computers -

And that's when the alarm bells started going off in my head.

You see, if I were to buy a Siobhan Donaghy CD (I tried; Rasputin Music didn't have one), rip the files, and put the files on my Z: drive, then I could easily access them from any computer. While perhaps there are some legal ramifications to this, I could make a moral argument that I bought the CD for my personal use, and the backup copy is stored in a single location - never mind the fact that I'm ACCESSING the backup copy from multiple locations.

But, in the same way that I could share my Z: drive with myself, I could share it with someone else. Or maybe thousands of someone elses. And that is, of course, just as illegal as Napster v1.0.

Now Gladinet, of course, is only a tool. There is nothing inherent in Gladinet that makes it illegal. It's just that Gladinet makes it even easier to perform illegal activities. (As does Google Docs, incidentally, since Google Docs files can now be shared, just like SkyDrive files can.)

Now of course there are countless ways in which I could engage in illegal activity without Gladinet. I could copy the files to a thumb drive, or a CD, or a floppy, or paper tape (a lot of paper tape). But that would be an asynchronous sharing of the files, which would eventually result in the files residing in two or more locations. This technology makes it really really easy for the files to reside in a single location, yet be shared by people simultaneously.

Now of course the RIAA could figure this out also, assume the worst, and require Gladinet users to pay exorbitant fees to the RIAA on the assumption that they ARE sharing files. But that would be a stupid move on the RIAA's part. And of course, we know that the RIAA never engages in any stupid m-

Um, never mind.

(Picture source, license)

Heard the new Carl Sagan/Stephen Hawking music track?

Jason Kottke isn't tired of auto-tune yet, and he shared this gem:



You can get the audio track from Colorpulse Music, along with other tracks such as one featuring Billy Mays and Scatman John.

The lineup for Oracle OpenWorld 2009 Appreciation Night

Even the Empoprise-MU blog gets involved in Oracle OpenWorld posting at times, primarily because of the "Appreciation Night" that is held at Oracle OpenWorld every year. It primarily features a bunch of bands. Thankfully, the Psychedelic Furs were not invited back this year, but, according to Oracle, here's who the attendees will see:

• Aerosmith


• Roger Daltrey (minus the Who)


• The Wailers (minus Bob Marley)


• Three Dog Night


• Shooter Jennings

And One, "Driving With My Darling"

From my buddies at YouTube:



The song appeared on the I.S.T. album in 1994.

If the name of the band doesn't ring a bell, I talked about And One's song "Life Isn't Easy in Germany" in a December 2008 post.

Editorial comment in last.fm biographies

last.fm biographies can be edited by users, and as of Wednesday night California time, someone expressed their opinion regarding the departure of the last original member from Sugababes.



Ouch.

Sounds like someone has sworn under an oath of war - but that Sugababe departed long ago.

Never be the stsohg AGAIN (to keep me from repeating myself)

...go ahead and re-visit these previous two posts:

Siobhan Donaghy, "Ghosts" (22 March 2009)


Lyrics | Siobhan Donaghy lyrics - Ghosts lyrics

Melanie C, "Never Be The Same Again" (23 March 2009)

Lyrics | Melanie C lyrics - Never Be The Same Again lyrics

Two good songs that go great together. And you don't even have to be a YouTube member to watch the videos.

And let me throw in an extra - "Ghosts" backwards.



But no, I can't find a widget with the backwards lyrics. Sorry.

And as long as I'm throwing new videos into this, here's a university project from Edge Hill University.

My ten favorite Duran Duran songs, and their Taylor level

I realize that my cousin will probably disown me when I admit this, but I cannot tell one Taylor from another. If you were to ask me to name the current and former members of Duran Duran, I would respond as follows:

• Simon LeBon


• Nick Rhodes (on a good day; sometimes I'd say "the other guy")


• Warren Cuccurullo (kinda young kinda wow)


• All the Taylors

Now, while my cousin can tell one Taylor apart from another (she was photographed with one of them), I'm forced to admit that if Jackie Taylor, Marlon Taylor, and Randy Taylor walked up to me on the street, I couldn't tell them apart or tell you what instrument they played.

Now, of course, you know that the Taylors' names aren't Jackie, Marlon, or Randy. They are actually Alan, Wayne, and Jay.

No, actually their names are John, Roger, and Andy. Duran Duran's official website records the entries and exits of the various Taylors, to wit:

• John (guitar), along with Nick Rhodes, founded Duran Duran around 1978.


• Roger (drums) joined in 1979. John had switched from guitar to bass by this time.


• The last Taylor, Andy (guitar), joined in 1980, around the same time that Simon LeBon became the vocalist, thus setting the stage for the "classic" lineup of Duran Duran.


• In 1984-1985 the Taylors split off on separate side projects, with John and Andy joining the Power Station while Roger joined Arcadia.


• By the end of 1985 two Taylors, Roger and Andy, leave Duran Duran.


• In 1995 Roger joins Duran Duran for one song, but not permanently.


• In 1996 John leaves Duran Duran, leaving the band Taylor-less for the first time ever.


• The Taylor-less nature of the band is short-lived, as all three Taylors rejoin Duran Duran in 2001.


• Andy then left for a second time in 2006.

So it is possible to measure the Taylor level for any Duran Duran song. I've listed my ten favorite Duran Duran songs below, followed by their Taylor levels.

• "Hold Back the Rain," 3 Taylors


• "The Chauffeur," 3 Taylors


• "Is There Something I Should Know?" 3 Taylors


• "The Wild Boys," 3 Taylors


• "A View to a Kill," 3 Taylors


• "American Science," 1 Taylor


• "Winter Marches On," 1 Taylor


• "Ordinary World," 1 Taylor


• "Thank You," 1 Taylor


• "Electric Barbarella," 0 Taylors

However, there are truly not enough data points to draw any conclusions regarding my like of a song in comparison to its Taylor quotient. As it turns out, I am most familiar with the "Rio" (3) and "Notorious" (1) albums, but the exuberance of the former and the world-weariness of the latter is not directly related to the Taylor level.

(Picture source, license)